


The cat and the full moon

by Hotaru_Tomoe



Series: Bullets [15]
Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Halloween, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 19:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21258413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/pseuds/Hotaru_Tomoe
Summary: Boris brings home a stray cat and grows very fond of himHowever, the pet is a bit strange and has the habit of disappearing on full moon nights.





	The cat and the full moon

The first time Boris saw the cat, he was coming home from the courtroom after the umpteenth divorce hearing.

After making their married life impossible for years, with the help of the lawyers, he and his (almost) ex wife were making even the divorce painfully difficult.

God, he was so tired and embittered, he just wanted for it to end for good.

Boris parked the car, and heard some noises coming from the back alley of his building.

If someone had decided to steal from his or his neighbours apartment, they had chosen the wrong day.

He grabbed a bottle of empty vodka by the neck and went to check, but there were no burglars, only three fighting cats. Two large tabby cats, which Boris had already seen several times around there, were beating a gray cat he had never seen before.

Apparently the two tabby cats didn’t like the new one, and were letting him know that he had ventured into the wrong neighbourhood.

The gray cat was really terrified, and tried to run away by jumping on a dumpster, but completely missed the jump and slammed his snout against it.

The force of the blow left him stunned.

Boris had pity on him, and decided to intervene, chasing away the two tabbies with a wave of his hand, and picking up the other cat.

"Easy now," he said slowly, placing the pet inside his coat: you could never know how a stray cat would react, but this one was calm in his arms, didn’t even meow in protest: maybe it was a domestic cat that was lost?

He went up into his apartment, put the animal on the ground, and saw a large black stain on his shirt: apparently the cat wasn’t gray, he was simply very dirty.

The little animal looked at him, mortified, as if he wanted to apologize, and Boris noticed that he had beautiful blue eyes.

"The shirt can be washed, and so can you. Do we want to find out what color your fur is?"

He took him to the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the faucet, preparing to face a mad cat, but again the pet remained quiet under the jet of warm water while Boris massaged him with soap.

Rinsed off all the dirt, the cat revealed a beautiful tawny coat; he had no fleas and wasn’t undernourished, so he was probably a domestic cat, even though he didn't have a collar and a tag.

"Tomorrow morning I'll hang flyers in the neighbourhood and I'll try to get you back home, but now let's take care of these ugly scratches."

The other two cats had beaten him badly, and when Boris disinfected him, the cat finally protested weakly.

"Just a moment, if the scratches get infected, it will be worse."

The cat meowed again, pained and miserable, and Boris blew on the scratches to ease the pain.

"You haven't even tried to fight back, you aren’t really a macho, are you?"

For dinner he cooked himself a fish soup, leaving some for the cat, then he sat on the sofa with a glass of vodka.

The cat looked around, wary; surely he didn't feel comfortable in a new house, but after a short survey, he sat down at the foot of the sofa and looked at Boris, tilting his head to one side.

He was really cute and even well mannered.

"Yes, you can come up," Boris said, patting the cushion.

The cat evaluated the distance, moved his head, wiggled his butt, charged the jump, and missed again, ending to crash into the backrest.

"Are you okay?" Boris asked, picking him up: cats were agile creatures, maybe this one was sick and his owners had abandoned him? It would explain the absence of a tag.

"That's what people do, isn't it?" The politician muttered, petting him, "when they don't need you anymore, they throw you away."

The cat looked at him with his intense blue eyes, then started purring, and Boris decided that he didn't care if he wasn't his cat, the next day he would take him to the vet to see if he was ill.

When he got up to go to bed, the cat followed him, but stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, shy, almost as if he thought he wasn’t allowed to enter there.

"Come in," Boris laughed, "I had much worse bedfellows in this room."

The cat tried twice to get on the bed, but he only ended up scratching the bedspread, and in the end it was Boris who put him on the side where his wife hadn't slept for months.

A substantial improvement in his opinion.

After the shower, he decided it was too hot for the pajamas; after all, now he lived alone, he could do whatever he wanted, even parade around naked.

When Boris came out of the bathroom, the cat was grooming himself, scrubbing the front paw behind his ear, but when he saw Boris, he froze with his tongue out, his lifted paw beside his snout, and his pupils huge and round. He lost his balance and ended up lying on his side.

"You really are a strange cat," Boris chuckled, slipping under the covers, "It's always me, I’m just naked."

Only when he was about to fall asleep, Boris realised that it was the first time in months that he could take his mind away from the divorce for a few hours, thanks to that funny cat.

The next day Boris kept his promise and hung some flyers around, with the description of the cat, and his phone number.

In the afternoon he took him to the vet, to try to understand why he couldn't jump like the other cats: he hoped it wasn't too serious.

During the journey home from the vet, Boris had to pull over because he laughed too much to drive safely.

Locked in the cage in the back seat, the cat seemed extremely mortified by Boris' laughter, to the point that the human felt the need to explain himself.

"Sorry, but this is the funniest thing that has happened to me lately: I spent all those rubles to hear the vet say you're perfectly healthy, you're just short-sighted and clumsy. I... I hadn't been laughing like this for months."

The flyers didn’t lead to anything: no one had lost a red cat, or wasn’t interested on having him back, and Boris didn’t even thought to take him to a shelter. 

Keeping the cat with him was a natural decision, and the bond between them was almost instantaneous.

He tried to give him several names, but the cat didn’t react to any of them (some were indeed stupid) and somehow no one seemed to fit him well, so he was simply the red cat that lived with him.

The cat was overly affectionate: he waited in front of the door every night that Boris returned from work and greeted him with a happy meow, curled up in his lap and purred while Boris was watching television or reading the newspaper, woke him up by touching his face when the alarm didn’t go off and Boris risked to be late for work.

He was also very docile and calm, didn't chase balls of paper, didn't climb the tents, didn't throw stuff on the ground, and didn't cause havoc, except when he tried to do something different than put a paw in front of the other.

Boris had quickly grown accustomed to the oddities of that cat, even though they were many.

Sometimes Boris caught him looking at the newspaper, and if he had been a man with a little more imagination, he would have thought the cat was reading it, but probably he just liked the smell of paper or ink.

The cat became more clumsy than usual every time Boris walked around naked, banging against the walls and furniture, and the times when Boris masturbated, he froze like a marble statue, and after, he didn’t look at Boris for a while, as if he were embarrassed, although Boris knew that cats didn't have that kind of feeling.

Everything was going well, but then one night Boris came home and the cat didn't run to greet him as usual.

A gust of cold air made him start: the window next the fire escape was open. How could it have happened? He was always very careful, he was sure that it was closed that morning.

He would think about it later, now he had to find the cat.

Boris ran outside, called him, kneeling under the cars, looking inside the dumpsters and in the courtyard of the surrounding buildings; it was a full moon night, so it was easy to see even in the dimly lit alleys, but the cat seemed to have disappeared into thin air. 

Boris was very worried: he was clumsy and couldn’t stand up to other strays, he risked to be beaten again or to be killed by a car.

He walked to an old abandoned warehouse, where he knew there was a cat colony, but he wasn’t there either.

Instead Boris almost clashed with a man hidden in the shadow of the entrance of the warehouse, barefoot and wrapped in some old jute bags as only protection, his eyes lowered to the ground and his head turned towards the wall.

A homeless man, probably, even though he was clean-shaven, and from what little Boris could see, clean and well combed.

"Did you see a red cat wandering around here?" Boris asked.

The man shook his head and cleared his throat before answering, "No, sir," with a strange hoarse voice, as if he was no longer used to talking. Well, he probably didn't have many friends to talk to.

It was a clear but cold night, and Boris thought of his warm, clean apartment and his closet full of shoes and elegant clothes. Without thinking too much, he took off his coat and his shoes, handing them to the man.

"No, I can't accept..."

"It's cold, and in a few hours it will be colder."

The man took the coat, thanking him with a nod: he had soft and well-groomed hands, he didn't really look like a homeless person, maybe he was just going through a difficult time.

Boris walked away, looking for the cat, when the other man spoke again: "I wouldn't worry too much: cats like to wander, but they always come back to a house where they are fine... where... they are loved."

"Thank you. But I'm half a meter further to the right than where you’re looking," Boris chuckled.

The man was barely looking in the direction where Boris was.

"Forgive me, I'm very short-sighted."

That said, the man took refuge in the abandoned warehouse.

The prediction of the homeless proved to be correct: the cat reappeared the next morning on the fire escape, scratching on the glass to come in.

"Ehi you! Where have you been?"

Boris lifted him in his arms and rubbed his nose against the soft head, while the cat purred louder than usual, perhaps to make it up to him.

"You scared me, don’t disappear like this ever again."

The cat looked at him for a moment with those hypnotic, almost human blue eyes, then rubbed his head against Boris' neck, meowing softly.

For a moment he seemed to be apologizing to Boris.

During the following month the cat stayed at home and didn’t run away again; the only noteworthy event was that one evening Boris found his ex-wife waiting on the landing, with a contrite and deeply annoyed expression on her face.

"What are you doing here?" Boris asked.

"I came to get my last stuff, but that ferocious beast didn't let me in."

Ferocious beast? His cat? He was the most docile cat on earth!

"Am I wrong, or the judge had said that I should have been here, when you came to get your belongings?"

His ex-wife sighed, deeply annoyed, "I certainly can't accommodate to your working schedule, I have a life! But of course it does matter to you, you never cared!"

Boris was sure she wanted to take advantage of his absence to take stuff that hadn’t been assigned to her in the divorce, but he said nothing, he was sick of fighting, so he opened the door and let her gather her stuff.

"Be sure to take everything," he warned her, "because tomorrow I'll change the lock."

The cat stayed under the table all the time, eyeing her, but when the woman passed by him, he grumbled and hissed loudly, snapping forward.

"It's the right pet for you," the woman spat, "you look alike!" 

Then she left, slamming the door.

The cat hissed again, but when Boris knelt to pet him, he calmed down immediately.

"You're an excellent guard cat," he said jokingly, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. He had believed in his marriage, and he was embittered to see that, in the end, there was nothing left but resentment.

That night the cat slept curled up on his chest, purring all the time.

Then, one evening Boris came back home, and the window that overlooked the fire escape was open again.

The cat had somehow opened it, but Boris couldn't understand how he did it, since he had trouble even to jump off the sofa.

Once in the street, Boris realized that it was another full moon night,

He wondered if there was a link between this and the strange behavior of his cat, and he remembered the old legends his grandmother told him when he was child, of animals endowed with supernatural powers.

His steps took him back to the old abandoned warehouse. He no longer thought of the man he had given his coat and shoes to, and was curious to see if he was still there.

He was, and was still wearing Boris' clothes.

He had lit a fire inside a metal bin to keep himself warm, and was scribbling something on a wall with a piece of chalk.

He was so absorbed by the task that he didn’t notice Boris, until he cleared up his throat.

Out of fear, the homeless started, and the chalk fell from his hand.

"Sorry, I didn't want to scare you," Boris apologized.

"No, no, there is no problem. And then I know I shouldn't be here."

"I don't think anyone will come and tell you anything, this place has been abandoned for years."

Walking to him, Boris noticed that the man's coat was full of cat hair. Red hair.

"My cat. This time you saw it."

"Ah... uh..." the man looked down at his coat, "yes, I picked him up, but he struggled and ran away. In that direction," he said, pointing his arm at an opening in the wall.

"I don't understand," Boris mumbled, shaking his head, "he's so docile with me."

"It means that you are a special person, you know?" the man said, without looking Boris in the eye, "cats don’t become attached to anyone."

Boris shrugged, surprised by the unexpected compliment.

"Anyway thanks for trying to hold him, I'm going to look for him."

"I'm sure he'll come home also this time. Don't worry, cats are just like that."

"Do you have a cat too?"

"More or less," the man replied enigmatically, then turned back to his strange scribbles.

And also this time, the cat reappeared the following morning.

Boris let him in, and tried to be angry at the umpteenth night escape.

"You can’t see, you're clumsy, you risk being killed. You must not to run away!"

The cat lowered his ears and seemed really guilty, then rubbed himself against Boris' pants.

"Oh, to hell with that," he muttered, and then picked him up, "I'm glad nothing happened to you."

That day, Boris came back to the abandoned warehouse, to tell the tramp that he had been right again and his cat had returned home, but the man wasn’t there, there were only those scribbles on the wall. 

Boris understood that they were mathematical formulas, but he didn’t understand a single number of them.

He had believed that man lived there, but actually there were no clues that the place was inhabited: there were no cardboards or old blankets on the ground, not a small pot to warm up something to eat. He found only a carefully sealed plastic bag, hidden on top of an old shelving, with his coat and shoes inside.

It seemed that the man went there only occasionally, wearing the clothes he had given him.

But why?

His curiosity increased, and in the following days he did some research: the mathematical formulas written by that man were very complex, not something off elementary school, then he had to be a scientist of a certain level.

Boris leafed through the list of members of the Academy of Sciences and soon found him.

The man's name was Valery Legasov, he was a chemist and worked at the Kurchatov Institute.

Following an impulse, Boris decided to go and look for him at his workplace: he was intrigued that such a distinguished man would occasionally go to an abandoned warehouse to work, when he had an entire department for his studies.

He came up with two speculations: either that man was carrying out an illegal research, or he was really a strange duck.

The instinct suggested to Boris the second hypothesis rather than the first. Legasov hadn’t seemed suspicious, on the contrary, he had left in Boris the impression that he was a naive, almost candid man.

At the Kurchatov Institute, however, he had a surprise: a colleague of Legasov told him that the professor had been missing for about three months. One evening there was a party at the Institute, but after that, nobody had seen him either at work or at his place.

"Are you a relative, a friend?" the colleague asked.

"An acquaintance," replied Boris, and left.

The more he thought about it, the less that story made sense: a professor who suddenly abandons his work and runs away from home to be a tramp?

However he didn’t tell anyone that he had seen Legasov: he didn’t know the situation and Legasov could have had his good reasons for doing so.

During the following month, Boris occasionally visited the abandoned warehouse, but Legasov was never there.

Meantime, he had left the divorce behind himself, and was happy to live with his cat, who never ate the leftovers that Boris left him during the day, but waited for him to come home from work at night, to eat with him. And when Boris talked to him about himself or his day at the Kremlin, the cat looked at him with his bright and intelligent eyes, almost as if he really understood him.

Approaching again a full moon night, this time Boris made sure that the window was closed and bolted, yet that evening he found it open, and the cat wasn’t at home.

At this point Boris didn't know what to think.

This time he didn't even look for his pet in the neighbourhood, he went straight to the old warehouse, and Legasov was there.

He was still wearing his coat, but he wasn't writing on the wall; apparently he was yelling at nothing, with his hands on his hips and a decidedly annoyed face.

"Well, haven't you finished tormenting me yet? Will I spend the rest of my life like this?” He shouted, raising his arms to the sky.

Was he out of his mind? Boris wondered. Was that why he had run away? Had he had a nervous breakdown, perhaps because of stress?

"Um... are you alright?" Boris asked, stepping forward.

"Oh, it's you... yes, yes... I’m fine, even if it doesn't look like that," Legasov replied, scratching the back of his head, deeply embarrassed.

Boris observed Legasov better: he had reddish hair, a lot of freckles and two beautiful blue eyes that were looking at anything but him. Again, he was clean, didn't stink and wasn't emaciated, but if he had run away from home, where else was he hiding? And why did he come back to that warehouse only once a month?

"Who were you talking to?"

"Nobody, I was just venting out loud..." Legasov massaged his face with his hands, and then laughed without mirth.

"Do you need help, Professor Legasov?"

The man gasped, hearing his name, and his eyes widened.

"How do you know who I am?"

Boris pointed to the writing on the wall: "I would have said you were a mathematician, certainly a scientist. The Soviet Union keeps track of all its scientists, and finding a picture of you hasn’t been difficult. "

"I see."

"I ask you again, professor, do you need help? Did you get in trouble with the State?" Boris asked, pointing to the mathematical formulas.

"No, no, I swear, I'm not doing anything illegal, what you see are just biochemistry formulas."

"Then why are you hiding here?"

"I'm not exactly hiding, but I can't show myself now."

Boris raised an eyebrow: apart from his scarred cheeks, Legasov was a handsome man, he had no reason to hide. What he said made no sense to Boris.

"You look perfectly fine."

"No, right now I'm as far as possible from fine, believe me."

"Is it... a nervous problem?" Boris ventured. In fact Legasov seemed quite agitated.

"We can say so."

"There are places where they can help you."

"An asylum, do you mean? No, thanks."

Boris nodded, musings about it: asylums were absolutely unpleasant places, especially in the Soviet Union.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Professor?"

Legasov muttered something incomprehensible, and Boris asked him to repeat.

"Valery... you... can you call me Valery, if you want... if it's not a problem... or not..."

"Boris."

"Wh-what?"

"It's my name, Valery."

"Oh... oh... thank you for your offer, Boris, but there’s nothing you can do for me. It's complicated, it's really complicated," Valery sighed, shaking his head.

Boris decided not to investigate any further, not to distress him, and looked back at the formulas written on the wall.

"What did you say they are?"

Valery threw himself into the explanation, then, encouraged by some questions from Boris, he talked about his work, and Boris told him something about himself, too. 

They laughed several times.

At one point, Valery looked out a window and saw that the sky was brighter.

"What... what time is it?" He asked, suddenly agitated.

"Almost five in the morning, it's about to dawn."

"I have to go…"

They had been talking almost all night, but Boris didn't understand the reason for Valery's anguish now.

"If you have to go somewhere, I can take you, I have a car."

"No, no... thanks, but no... I’ve to go. I’m sorry, Boris, I’m really sorry."

Valery looked at him, deeply unhappy, then jumped to his feet and ran across the warehouse, stumbling a couple of times.

When Boris recovered from his surprise and rose to follow him, the professor had disappeared behind the door of the old office.

He wanted to shed light on that mystery, so he ran in the same direction and entered the office, but Valery seemed to have vanished into thin air. 

A noise, near an old rusted file cabinet, caught his attention; he looked down on the floor, and saw his cat, sitting on his coat and shoes.

Valery had run away from there naked?

What the hell was going on?

The cat meowed and Boris looked at him, "Come on, let's go home. Then, one day you will explain to me what the hell you are doing here every month."

The cat crashed into a chair leg; Boris sighed and picked him up.

"What would you do without me, hm?"

The cat hid his nose on his shirt and purred.

A neighbour saw Boris coming back with the cat in her arms.

"Ah, did he run away again?"

"Yes, sometimes he likes to live a little adventure."

"Be careful, sooner or later he will reappear with kittens in tow."

"Do you think?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Is that what you do?" Boris asked, looking at the cat, “are you a lady killer, then?"

The cat blew from his nose and seemed indignant at the idea.

"There is a remedy, to prevent him from escaping," the neighbour said, and raised the cat's tail, "ZAC!" She exclaimed, miming a pair of scissors near the animal's balls.

The cat's nails penetrated painfully past the fabric of Boris's jacket and shirt, to the point of pricking his skin, and the pet grumbled threateningly.

The woman hastily let go of his tail, and Boris apologized by saying that he didn’t like to be touched by strangers.

Once at home, the cat took refuge under the sofa, and didn’t go out, not even when Boris put a saucer of fresh fish in front of him, too terrified to move.

"I promise you I’ll not take away your manhood."

Talking with the cat had become a habit for Boris since the early days. Obviously he didn't think he really understood his words, but when the neighbour mentioned the castration, his reaction had been immediate.

He really seemed to have understood what she was talking about.

_ "Or more simply, he doesn't like being touched there by someone he doesn't know," _ Boris told himself. After a sleepless night, he definitely needed to lie down.

Boris did some other research on Legasov, without discovering anything substantial: he wasn’t married, lived alone, cared only about his work, and his file was immaculate, until one fine day he had disappeared.

The key to everything seemed to be the party that was held at the Institute on the evening of his disappearance, but according to the people with whom Boris spoke, Legasov had been there for a less than one hour, because he didn't like socializing. At one point he went out into the garden and no one had seen him since.

Even that month passed without significant events.

Only, one evening did Boris return home furious because of a work problem, but the cat gently headbutted him until Boris relaxed.

"Thanks," he murmured, kissing his head, "you're special, you know?"

But he was still curious about Professor Legasov, so Boris eagerly waited for the next the full moon night.

And because he was also curious about how his cat could escape every month, he stayed at home that day.

As the evening approached, the cat became increasingly restless, paced back and forth waving its tail and looking at Boris sideways, until he suddenly stopped, fell sideways with his legs and tail stiff, and began to meow in pain.

Scared, Boris didn’t think twice: he took the cat and ran down the stairs to rush to the vet, but once in the hallway, the cat wriggled free and ran away in the direction of the warehouse, leaving behind a cloud of red hair.

Boris blinked slowly for a few seconds: had the cat tricked him into leaving the house? But animals didn’t have a conscious mind, they weren’t able to elaborate such a Machiavellian action.

He really didn't know what to think, and he began to wonder if his cat's strange behaviour and Valery Legasov were somehow related. Was the scientist conducting an experiments on animals? Was that why he pretended to have disappeared?

At this point he wanted answers (and wanted to make sure that Legasov wasn't harming his cat) and he would have gotten them, dammit!

He marched in the direction of the abandoned warehouse, and found Legasov warming himself in front of the fire: it was the end of October and his coat, however heavy, was no longer enough. Legasov wasn’t writing his mathematical formulas, on the contrary, he had erased everything furiously with a brick, which he then threw forcefully against the wall.

He didn’t look up when Boris entered, and kept his head sunken between his shoulders.

"Bad night, Valery?" Boris ventured.

The man merely nodded, disconsolately.

His coat was still covered with cat hair.

"Where is my cat? And I would like to hear the truth this time."

"He’s fine, I promise. I would never hurt a living creature."

Boris believed him, but there was more, and he wanted to find out what it was.

"But it's because of you that he runs away from home every night of a full moon, right?"

Boris walked to him, and Valery took a step back.

"In... in a sense..."

"Explain yourself!"

"It's complicated," Valery replied, shaking his head.

"You can't hide behind this excuse forever, I want an answer!" Boris shouted.

Walking forward, Boris had forced Valery with his back against the wall.

"I…"

"Speak, dammit!"

Boris planted his hands on either side of Valery's head, who squeezed his eyes tight, as if he feared Boris wanted to hit him.

Boris lowered his hands immediately.

"Sorry, I didn't want to scare you, I just want to understand: what are you doing here every month, Valery? Are you doing scientific experiments on cats?” He ventured, pointing to the erased formulas on the wall.

"No," Valery rubbed his face, "it's not me the one who is conducting an experiment, if we want to call it like that, and science has nothing to do with... with everything that's happening to me, and also to the cat. This is the problem."

"I don’t understand."

Valery punched the wall: "I don't understand it myself, because it's something that shouldn't exist, and yet... and I can't explain it, you wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

"No, it’s useless."

"Try-me," Boris insisted, pushing Valery back against the wall, but without anger. He could feel Valery’s breath on his face, but he didn't move.

"You’re stubborn," Valery mumbled.

"You still don't know how much."

"Do you believe in magic, Boris?"

"No."

"Then you won't believe me."

"However," Boris continued, "I don’t fuck around with magic, or with those who believe in it."

Boris was too pragmatic to be superstitious, but he preferred not to scoff at those who believed in those old stories or in magic. Just to be cautious.

"Well, my problem is that I didn’t believe in magic. If you've done research on me, you know that the last time I was seen was during a party at the Kurchatov Institute, where I worked."

"Yes: no one has seen you since that night."

"I didn't even want to attend that stupid party, I'm not a social animal, but my boss forced me. I stayed there for about an hour, then I went out into the garden to smoke. I just wanted to go back to my laboratory as soon as possible, when I was approached by a woman. She asked me for a cigarette and started to talk, but I wasn't listening to her, because I was thinking about an experiment I was carrying out. She noticed it, because she became annoyed and asked me if she was boring me."

Boris raised an eyebrow, "You're not very diplomatic, are you?"

"No, I'm afraid it's not among my skills. In fact, I told her I wasn't interested and I wanted to go back to my lab. She said that I wasn’t very kind, and that in life there was much more than work, but I replied that, if it wasn’t about science, I didn't care. It was then that she became very serious and asked me if I believed in magic."

"And what did you tell her?"

"As you noticed, I'm not particularly diplomatic: I said that magic was a mountain of stupid nonsense and those who believed in it were just poor fools.  _ ‘What if I told you I’m a witch?’  _ she asked me. I replied that I would have had her locked up in an asylum."

"And then what happened?" Boris asked: for now he only understood that Valery had no idea how to talk to a woman.

"This is the part of the story that you won't believe. She's a witch for real and she cursed me! Because of the curse I became... I... I disappear, and I reappear only on full moon nights."

Until then, Valery had looked at Boris, but at last he lowered his eyes, so Boris knew he wasn't telling him the whole truth.

"There is more."

"Do you... do you mean that you believe me? Do you think I'm a victim of curse from a witch?"

It was absurd, it was unbelievable, but somehow it explained the bizarre behaviour of the professor.

"As I told you, I don't believe in magic, but I don't joke about it."

Valery shrugged: "There isn't much else to say: the witch told me that the curse would last until I found something more important than science, so I am condemned to life to this."

"Why do you say so?"

"Because to me there is nothing more important than science. I hoped that my knowledge could help me," Valery said, pointing to the mathematical formulas behind him, "but then I realized that it’s useless, because there is nothing logical or scientific about what happened to me. I can only hope that the witch will stop being angry at me and show some clemency."

"And what about my cat?"

Valery shrugged, "He has nothing to do with it."

"Don't lie to me: why does he come here every full moon night, when you're here too? Is it the witch's cat?"

"No, no, not at all. It's just a cat."

"We'll see." Boris sat cross-legged on the dirty floor.

"What are you doing?"

"This time we will wait together for my cat to come back."

"No, it's not possible. I told you that when the full moon set, I disappear."

"Well, it’s something that intrigues me, I would like to see how it works."

"No! You can’t!"

"Why?"

"Because... because... otherwise it will happen to you too, it's the curse."

"No, you made that up now."

"Boris, please..."

"Sit down Valery, it will be a long wait."

The more Valery insisted for him to leave, the more Boris wanted to stay.

Giving up, Valery sat with his back against the wall and pulled his knees to his chest.

Boris tried to make conversation, but barely Valery replied, his gaze increasingly distressed.

Last month they talked just fine, it seemed that there was a good harmony between them, so Boris couldn’t understand Valery’s current attitude.

Perhaps nothing would have happened at dawn?

But why would Valery have to come up with such a weird story?

In the meantime, Valery closed his eyes, falling asleep, and Boris spent the next few hours beside him, getting up from time to time to throw some pieces of wood into the bin.

The moment the sky started to lighten, Valery jumped up, trying to run away, but he had underestimated Boris' strength.

He reached Valery in a few steps, despite his bulk, and knocked him down, holding him with a hand on his back.

"Oh no, Cinderella, this time you won't run away at midnight."

"Boris... Boris, I beg you."

"I told you Valery, I'm stubborn."

Valery gave up and stopped struggling, resting his forehead on the dirty floor. A moment later a sob escaped his lips, and Boris instinctively let him go: he wasn't pressing so hard on his back, but he certainly didn't want to hurt him.

"Valery..."

"F-forgive me Boris, I never wanted to make fun of you, but I didn't know what else to do, and then you were so kind to me..."

"What are you talking about?"

"Forgive me, please…"

Valery’s body suddenly disappeared and, in its place, between the folds of the dark coat, emerged the guilty snout of his cat.

Boris stood up abruptly, backing away a few steps, his brain unable to process any thought.

The cat didn’t meet his gaze this time, he remained where he was, his ears low.

"You..." Boris panted.

Now he understood many things: the eyes of that cat that seemed almost human, the fact that he didn't behave at all like a cat, the fact that he seemed to understand what Boris was saying.

He had never been a cat.

The thought shocked him to the point he wasn’t even surprised of having seen a human transmuted into an animal.

"You..." he growled again, clenching his fists.

The cat started in fear.

"Four times... you had four times to tell me the truth about you, but you chose to keep fooling me all this time!" Boris thundered, and his voice rang out low and furiously between the old walls.

He turned, walking briskly towards the exit, and only at that point he hear a faint meow: the cat... Valery... whatever he was, had taken a step in his direction.

"Oh, don't even think about it: I don't want to see you anymore! Get lost!" He roared.

Valery meowed again, but Boris ignored him, he was too angry: Valery had sneaked into his home, his life, his heart. He had grown fond of that lovely pet, who waited impatiently for him in the evening and made him feel less lonely, and now he discovered that he wasn’t a cat at all, he was a person, a person who had every opportunity to tell him the truth, but he didn’t.

When he got home, Boris took the cat's bowl, cage and bed, and threw it all in the trash.

He didn't want to know anything about him anymore.

He threw himself on the mattress, ignoring the round imprint next to him, where the cat would no longer curled up, ignoring that part of his mind that was telling him that the days were getting colder, and that Valery was unable to live alone out there.

It wasn't his problem, he told himself, clenching his jaw.

The next morning the cat was at the corner of his building when Boris left the house to go to work, and meowed when he saw him.

Boris pretended not to see him as he climbed into the car, pretended not to see him when he returned in the evening, and also the next morning: if Valery had decided to spend the rest of his days there, he didn’t care.

When Boris parked the car that night, an icy wind was blowing, and the cat had curled up against the wall to feel less cold. Though, judging by the way he was shaking, it wasn’t working.

Boris ignored him again, and locked himself in his apartment; he made dinner, and his feet automatically avoided the spot where the cat's bowl was, before he remembered that he had thrown it away.

At one point he turned on the radio, annoyed: usually his evenings were accompanied by the sounds of the cat's meow and thuds when he clumsily climbed off a chair. 

He was no longer used to that silence.

To that solitude.

While he was in the shower, it started to rain outside, but Boris ignored the temptation to go and look at the window: surely Valery he wasn’t an idiot to the point of staying under a icy rain, but if he were, again it wasn’t his problem.

He lay down on the bed and resisted for about ten minutes, before he cursed loudly and went looking out the kitchen window.

The cat was still there.

"Fuck! Fuck it!" Boris punched the glass, then he went down into the street, still wearing the pajamas, under a pouring rain and picked up the cat, soaked to the bones.

Valery barely opened his eyes.

"What did you think you were doing, huh?" Boris roared, "making amends by freezing to death?"

The cat tried to meow, but he was too weak and cold, he trembled so much he seemed to have a seizure.

Boris placed him on the sofa, took a towel and rubbed him vigorously to dry the rain, but the cat didn’t stop shaking: he needed heat, immediately, and there was only one solution.

Boris slipped off his wet pajamas and held the cat against his chest, encircling him with his arms to warm him up as best he could; the cat meowed faintly, and Boris grunted, "Not now, we'll talk about it later, when you can talk and you won't be freezing."

Valery looked up, but Boris turned away his eyes: he wanted to continue to be angry, he thought he had the right to be angry, after Valery had lied to him, but if the cat kept looking at him with those sad eyes, he would forgive him.

Seeing that Boris was still furious, and didn’t want to forgive him, Valery tried to slip away from his embrace to leave, but the man squeezed him harder.

"I didn't go out to recover you from a storm just to get you soaked again. You stay here until it stops raining."

"It's a very problematic cat, isn't it?" said a loud female voice.

Boris looked up and saw a woman dressed in black, with long, almost white hair that reached her waist. Her eyes were gray, icy, and her face was angular, but very interesting.

As soon as he saw her, the cat hissed, and Boris understood she was the witch who had transformed him in a cat (well, the fact that she had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of his living room was a strong clue, too).

"What do you want?" Boris asked. Instinctively, his arms tightened a little more around the cat.

"This game has been fun for a while, but in the last few days it has taken a turn that I hadn’t anticipated, and it went too far. I just wanted to teach this scientist a life lesson, not to let him die, nor to cause such a big drama. I'm not a drama girl, I like to have fun."

Having said that, she touched the cat's nose, and Boris, who until then was clutching a small ball of red fur, found himself hugging an astonished scientist, with damp hair falling before his eyes, completely naked.

Boris was also completely naked.

Realizing that little detail, Valery jumped to his feet, frantically searching for something to cover himself with; he ran to the nearest curtain, tripping over the sofa, knocking down a small table and a vase, and pulled it down, wrapping it around himself.

Clumsy as a human as he was as a cat.

But before he covered himself, Boris had time to notice that, in this form, Valery had a remarkable butt.

For his part, Boris refused to cover himself: if a witch decided to appear in his living room unannounced, she also had to face the consequences.

The woman, however, was unperturbed by their nudity.

"It's not a full moon night," Valery observed, looking at his hands, human again.

"No: I got exactly what I wanted," the witch's gaze ran briefly between Boris and Valery, "so I lifted the curse."

"Just like that?"

"Yup, just like that. Oh... I was about to forget," the witch snapped her fingers, making a glass vial containing a blue liquid appear, and handed it to Valery.

"What's this?"

"A small gift to apologize. It's a magic potion: drink it and you will forget the last four months."

"Everything?"

"Everything."

However, Valery didn’t take the vial.

"Come on, what are you waiting for? I swear it’s not poison. With this you will forget that you were a cat and have been away from your precious lab all this time."

Valery lowered his eyes, "Give it to him," he said, pointing to Boris, "he has more right than me to forget what happened."

He sounded heartbroken.

"As you wish." The witch turned to Boris, "Drink it, and it will be as if nothing had happened. You've already thrown away the cat's stuff, with this you won't remember ever having one."

It was the most logical decision: to forget forever that interlude of madness and all its protagonists, including the man standing behind him. 

But something prevented him from accepting the offer.

"No?" the witch asked, seeing that Boris wasn’t taking the vial.

"I don't like shortcuts," he replied brusquely, and Valery raised his head, looking at him in awe.

"As you wish. One last thing, Professor Legasov: next time be kinder to a lady, even if you care for her as much as you care for meteorology. Good evening, comrades," the witch made a playful bow, and then disappeared.

"A remarkable woman. Didn’t you like her, really?" Boris asked, to break the awkward silence.

"As she said, I'm not... I'm not a meteorology enthusiast… ah!"

Sometimes Valery had this gift of opening his mouth and saying all that was in his head, inappropriate confessions included; panicked, he moved towards the front door, but stumbled into the curtain around his feet and knocked down an armchair.

"Could you stop destroying my house?" Boris barked.

"Sorry... sorry... I'm leaving now."

"You can't walk around like that, the police would arrest you. And then it’s still raining."

Valery nodded and leaned against the wall, waiting for Boris to go and get him some clothes, before throwing him out of his house.

Instead Boris sat on the couch, looking at him, naked and perfectly at ease.

"Can you cover yourself?" Valery pleaded.

"Why? You've seen me naked before, when you pretended to be a cat," Boris reminded him.

"It's not my fault," Valery protested, "I couldn't know that I would end up living with someone without the slightest sense of decorum!"

"It's my house, I do what I want."

"Sure sure. Look, if you give me something to wear, I'll leave right away..."

But Boris had no intention of letting it go: Valery still owed him an explanation.

"You watched me while I tossed off. You could have moved to another room when I did it, if you care so much about decorum."

A violent blush exploded on the professor's face as he tried to disappear into the green curtain, like a big, ridiculous caterpillar in his cocoon; he muttered something incomprehensible, and Boris asked him to repeat.

"I said it was useless, I could hear you everywhere."

Boris couldn’t deny he was very vocal during sex.

"Looking back about it now, I think that you liked the show."

If possible, Valery became even redder.

"It-it was scientific curiosity. A man your age shouldn't have the stamina to masturbate every day, even twice a day," Valery stammered.

"You won't get away with compliments," Boris replied, resting his arms on the back of the sofa, "But I deduce that you like me... more than meteorology."

Valery nodded slightly.

Boris stored the information for a more suitable moment. "I cleaned your litter box," he remarked after a brief pause.

Valery moaned, humiliated, "We should have drunk that potion to forget..."

Boris opened his mouth, to remind him of some other fact and further twist the knife in the wound, but Valery stopped him: "I made something deeply wrong, I know, and I'm really sorry, Boris. I understand perfectly why you’re so angry with me, I would be furious with you too, if our roles were reversed, but... I had been transformed into a cat, I was scared, I didn't know what to do, the other cats constantly attacked me, and I didn't know if I would survive."

"You were looking for shelter and food, I can understand that. But," Boris stood up and walked to him, "why were you so affectionate with me? You came looking for me when I came home, you sat on my legs, you purred. You could have avoided this, I wouldn't have thrown you back in the street."

"I know I took advantage of you..."

"You saw it when I became fond of the cat... of you," he accused him, "you should have told me, the first time I saw you in human form. Why didn't you do it?"

For a moment Valery looked really desperate, "Because you were so sweet to me! I've always lived alone, I've never had an important bond with anyone, this was the first time that someone loved me and this made me happy. You didn't care if I was clumsy and if I didn't behave like a normal cat, you were fine with it anyway."

"Did I make you happy?" Boris didn't think he did anything extraordinary, he just behaved like a decent person. But maybe Valery wasn't used to this.

"Sure! Even when I was in human form: you gave me your coat, you talked to me, although I looked like a lowlife. So... I wanted to show you that I loved you too, and I wanted to do something for you, to thank you, to make you feel better after your divorce, even I could only purr and wait for the evening to eat with you."

Boris remembered every night he spent with the cat on his knees, talking to him, petting him behind his ears; he remembered how much the cat had made him laugh with his quirks, how much the his company had done him good.

"In the end the witch really got what she wanted, because I found something... someone that was more important to me than my work and science. But," Valery continued, looking at the floor, "I messed up and ruined everything."

He stood before Boris, breathing heavily, and when the other man's shadow was upon him, he squinted.

"You’re a disaster, Valery Legasov, both in human and in cat form," Boris sighed and his breath blew on Valery's forehead, "What should I do with you, hm?"

Valery didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes, and when Boris placed two fingers under his chin to raise his head, he offered a strenuous resistance.

He was still trembling, cold, afraid, ashamed, and Boris changed his strategy: he placed a hand on Valery’s nape, stroking it and scratching the scalp from time to time, as he would do with a cat.

It was such a sweet gesture... why was Boris still so sweet to him, after what had happened?

In a fit of courage, or perhaps of madness, Valery let the curtain slide to the ground, leaning against Boris' chest.

Now that he was human again, his sense of smell was no longer so acute, but he still perceived the smell of Boris’ skin, so particular and unmistakable. Unconsciously, Valery let out a low hum in the back of his throat.

Boris' hand stopped stroking his head.

"Did you just…?"

Valery hummed again and nodded: he could no longer purr, but this was close by.

"You don’t have to."

"Maybe I want to," Valery mumbled, rubbing his face against Boris’ chest, and Boris began to stroke his nape again.

"You’re still a disaster."

"I know."

"And I'm still mad at you," Boris insisted, though he knew he wasn't particularly credible as he hugged him, while they were both naked.

"That's right, I understand," Valery said, "can I... can I hope to regain your trust?"

"It can be arranged."

"Do you want me to leave now?" Valery asked, but at the same time he slid his arms around Boris' waist.

"No, it's still raining."

It was a lie, the storm had ceased.

This time, when Boris placed two fingers under his chin, he offered no resistance.

"Tell me professor," Boris said, a light note in his voice, "do you still have any scientific curiosity about my stamina?"

"I’ve many," Valery replied, and parted his lips when Boris' mouth caught his.


End file.
